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Abstract #3545

A multimodal approach to identify and localize complex pathological processes affecting tissue microstructure in Neuropsychiatric SLE

Ece Ercan 1 , Carson Ingo 1 , Cesar Magro Checa 2 , Mark van Buchem 3 , Andrew Webb 1 , and Itamar Ronen 1

1 C. J. Gorter Center for High Field MRI, Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, 2 Department of Rheumatology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands, 3 Department of Radiology, Leiden University Medical Center, Leiden, Netherlands

Systemic lupus erythematous (SLE) is an autoimmune disease affecting multi-organ systems. SLE adversely impacts the central nervous system, causing neurological and psychiatric (NP) symptoms in 40% of the patients. Heterogeneity of NP symptoms among patients and the lack of gold standard make diagnosis of Neuropsychiatric SLE (NPSLE) challenging. In this study we applied a multi-modal approach to better characterize white matter microstructural damage in NPSLE. Our results suggest that only a multimodal approach has the potential to thoroughly identify disease-related changes in the brain due to complex disease mechanisms such as NPSLE and thus to improve the clinical diagnosis.

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